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Friday, 18 April 2014

1 and 1/2 rabbit

What a busy time this Easter time is for me. I've been busy tidying up, cooking, setting up the decorations, finishing my craft projects and now I've found a spare moment to come online here and write this blog post for you. I hope you all enjoy your Easter time and spending it together with your beloved.

Today I'm going to show you what I have been creating recently :) Do you perhaps remember this cheerful book with Easter projects by Arne & Carlos I blogged sometime ago? I have knitted a few Easter eggs and the Easter balls from this book already but this year time has come to try out something else. Something out of my knitting comfort zone. Something I've been wanting to knit for a long time. So this time I have knitted my first Easter rabbit and I think I've got hooked on it :)

I know it's not perfect. It's a prototype. It may have some sort of "knitted celullitis", flabby bottom and some lumps and bumps on his body. I've made a couple of mistakes on the way as I went along but now I know how to avoid them :) Overall the bunny isn't that hard to knit, you just need to read the instructions carefully, perhaps a few times to get the idea. However the hardest thing was to knit the heel - that extra 6-row bit that is knitted and purled and then you've got to work out on your own how to pick up and knit the vertical stitches on both sides of that bit. The book is not very helpful with the explanations on how to do it (which is a shame really) and I know from the Amazon reviews that the other knitters usually struggle with this bit too. I basically used a trial-and-error method and did my own thing which ultimately helped me to shape the bunny's heel but it wasn't exactly what the instructions said. However, looking through the other books of Arne and Carlos and searching for more explanation I have discovered that their knitted dolls book (lucky if you've got one) includes a very similar piece of instructions for knitting a doll's heel and there is a small helpful picture showing which stitches should be picked. Finally I managed to work it out and I think it is the right way to knit the bunny's heel. I'm gonna practise that with the next bunnies.
The rabbit's face was another "critical" knitting moment as the face requires the very same type of knit-and- purl bit of fabric and it needs to be knitted into bunny's face, giving it a characteristic bunny type nose.

The second moment I struggled with was how to join two legs and knit the corpus but it turned out that you just put four dpn needles together just as you always do when you knit in rounds and simply knit two legs together with the bind-off sides facing each other and then you stitch them up. The 3rd moment I struggled with was embroidering bunny's eyes. I unpicked the stitches 3 times before I managed to get them look acceptable. I followed the instructions from the book which basically said: knit the head, fill it up with stuffing then embroider the facial features. Ha! The problem here will is: how to embroider the bunny's face without the knotting the yarn on the opposite side. Next time I'm going to stitch the eyes while the head is not fully knitted and bound off.

Generally I'm pleased with my 1st bunny. The colors of yarns are random. I never care much for the colours I use when I make my first model. They are mostly any scraps of yarn. I'm more focused on reading and understanding the pattern.

I stuffed the rabbit with the cotton wool. It's very light and it feels nice to hold the bunny in hand. It would make a nice teddy toy for a child.

The pompom at the bunny's butt.

My bf adopted the bunny. Now he's driving around with it on his dashboard. Sorta a campervan mascot now ... and a dust wiper :)

And in the meantime a mint green cousin rabbit is dangling half way through off my needles :) Still using an acrylic yarn but the stitches are smoother and more even. The heels look nicer too.

I stuff and sew up the bunny as I go. It is knitted in pieces which are connected with each other at some point. In the end the whole bunny is dangling off your needles.